October 26th, 2009 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Oct
26
October 26th, 2009 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Oct
26
December 30th, 2008 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Dec
30
A few days ago, I found this in the window of my local computer shop, Computers @ Bayside.
The product was an ATI Radeon X1300 Pro graphics accelerator. Unfortunately it proved really difficult to take a good picture through the glass, so I didn’t get a good shot of the whole box. However, without doubt, that sticker says, “Lekker 3 Years Warranty.”
The local importer of the Taiwanese Gigabyte range of products is Rectron, and they have a pretty close relationship with the manufacturer, so it is possible that this is part of some kind of custom packaging for South Africa. It could, however, have been applied by Rectron, or by Computers @ Bayside. Whatever the origins, it’s a very cool find!
July 25th, 2008 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Jul
25
As I sit here in O. R. Tambo Airport’s domestic departure lounge, I’m highly amused by an example of job creation that I encountered while checking in.
Recently, South African airports have added self-service check-in kiosks. These things are the greatest invention since the high-heel boot and really do save you a lot of time. Well, sometimes.
The problem is that when they were first installed, each kiosk came with a operator. These operators were not very bright, and significantly slowed down your use of the kiosk as they strained to remember what to do next after every keystroke*.
It didn’t take long for laziness to improve the system. Within a few weeks the operators had become a vague, shadowy presence on the edge of your consciousness as they left you to operate the machine yourself, and to get your boarding pass in double-quick time!
In Johannesburg, a sinister trend has developed. Each kiosk operator sports a clipboard. As you start to use the machine, or as you try to leave with your boarding pass, they run over and ask you what your name is.
Now, I don’t believe that people have the right to know my name. If the airline knows enough about me to let me on the flight, I’m darned if I’m going to oblige some minor bureaucrat-in-training with more information. Yes, I did briefly toy with the idea of claiming to be Osama bin Laden, but this is an airport and that could land me in the Guatanamo Bay barber shop quartet faster than you can harmonise “Allah Akbar! God is Great!” Therefore, I respectfully declined to participate.
Today’s young lady was affronted. She explained that she was just doing her job, and that it was an important job because her employer suspected her and her colleagues of standing around all day doing nothing. Therefore, they had to write down the names of everybody who checked in using the kiosk.
*: Actually, these are touch-screen kiosks, but you get the idea.
April 26th, 2008 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Apr
26
Almost two months ago, I posted an article about the totalitarian attitudes of airport security staff and how this boded badly for our freedoms.
Co-incidentally, on more or less the same day, the Stellebosch police performed a ham-handed raid on several student bars in the town. The scenes were captured on security videos and the images of police officers brutally storming into the bars, discharging their weapons and physically abusing the students are chilling. As usual, the storm has died down and this police operation appears to have gone completely unexplained, with nobody being called to account for it.
I would encourage you to watch the video here, and to keep this incident at the forefront of your thoughts, especially when dealing with the coppers. Remember, uniforms alone should not command respect.
Our hero walks into the room, sipping his drink.
He doesn’t seem to notice the policeman with an assault rifle standing in the room.
Oh hello! What have we here?
Notice how, already, our hero draws his brandy and code toward himself protectively.
Now we see the stuff this man is made of. Casually holding his drink, he looks around the room while the police beat his friends savagely. He is the last man standing in the room.
Finally, a pig throws him to the ground savagely.
He observes some more, probably evaluating his options.
Gosh. Evaluation is thirsty work!
Thankfully, his drink is completely unaffected by the scuffle.
Mmmm! Delicious!This man is a true Stellenbosch legend. Congratulations to you, Sir, for keeping your priorities in order in the face of authoritarian terrorism. If you read this, please leave a message. I’d feel privileged to interview you for this blog. If anybody can identify this hero, please put him in touch with me. Viva la revolucion!
February 10th, 2008 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Feb
10
In celebration of a day of worldwide protest against the Church of Scientology organised by the shadowy hacker group Anonymous, I’ve decided to share some history that I have recently discovered.
L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, spent a considerable amount of time living in South Africa, and the then Rhodesia, where he frequently wrote to members of the white minority governments of both territories. You can see pictures of his Johannesburg home here.
Hubbard’s time in Africa influenced many aspects of Scientology. For example, one activity that Scientology prescribes for members of some ranks is the security check. The Scientologist holds the cans of an E-Meter while responding to a rapid-fire list of questions. While living in Johannesburg, Hubbard developed the Johannesburg Security Check, which he described as, “the roughest security check in Scientology.” Most of the questions are crime related and include, “Have you ever murdered anyone?” and, “Have you ever raped anyone?”, as well as this absolute zinger:
“Have you ever slept with a member of a race of another color?”
Of course, times change and the Johannesburg Security Check was subsequently replaced by the Only Valid Security Check, which has a slightly different set of questions including, “Have you ever had unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard?”
Religion, as we all know, works in mysterious ways. It would perhaps exceed the level of unkindness that Mr Hubbard merits for him to be branded as a racist based on the Johannesburg Security Check alone. After all, according to the Church of Scientology itself, Hubbard was a liberal who devoted his time in Africa to fostering human rights and encouraging governments to extend the franchise to people of all races.
A greater understanding of his views on race relations can be attained from his open support of the apartheid township policy in a letter to Dr H. F. Verwoerd, the “architect of apartheid”:
“Having viewed slum clearance projects in most major cities of the world may I state that you have conceived and created in the Johannesburg townships what is probably the most impressive and adequate resettlement activity in existence.” – L. Ron Hubbard
Hubbard’s ingrained racism does not stop there. Like “security checks”, Scientology includes “rundowns“, a set of procedures designed to address specific problems. South Africa is unique in that there is a rundown specifically for her citizens, the South African Rundown. According to Mr Hubbard himself, it was necessary to create a rundown specifically for South Africans because:
“The South African native is probably the one impossible person to train in the entire world – he is probably impossible by any human standard.” – L. Ron Hubbard
The sources for these quotations have not been checked thoroughly due to the unavailability to me of original documents. I’ve been careful to use only material that has been property referenced in other sources, to which all links have been included. A big-up to Martin for drawing my attention to these utterances in the first place.
By no means do I mean to imply that the Church of Scientology is a racist organisation. The Church of Scientology is a cruel, deceitful and manipulative organisation just like any other church. The evidence suggests very strongly, however, that L. Ron Hubbard, their founder and the object of their personality cult, was a racist in the purest definition of the word, and did not consider applying of his apparently inexhaustible arcane knowledge to the upliftment of those who suffered oppression in the countries he visited. Oppressed people tend to have less money than their oppressors. One must wonder if these two facts are connected.
February 5th, 2008 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Feb
05
I’ve taken a longer break than anticipated, mainly due to the fact that I was lazy, and was considering instituting a fixed routine of blogging every Tuesday evening. Tuesday’s aren’t especially good days, however, so I am still undecided.
Tuesdays might be better in general than any day on which you choose to take the ferry to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and many other luminaries of the revolution were incarcerated. IOL reports today that, as part of the “New Visitor Experience” programme, visitors would be shackled during the trip, to give them a better idea of what the prisoners felt like on the way over.
Wait… Just let me collect my wits…
Nope. No luck. Every time I read this, I expect that on some level I will see that it is not the most astoundingly bad idea I’ve heard this year. Unfortunately, it is, on a great many levels.
Firstly, would you want to set out on the ocean off The Cape of Storms in handcuffs? Handcuffed people have died in swimming pools, let alone the Atlantic Ocean!
Ms Shalo Mbatha, spokesperson for the Robben Island Museum, assures us that visitors will not be shackled directly to the boat, and that it will be done safely and only by choice. What, specifically, would the visitors be shackled to? A lifeboat? A 16 ton weight on the deck of the boat? How could it possibly be safe to set out to sea in handcuffs?
The boats themselves don’t have a great record either. In January, trips were cancelled because the boat had broken down. In the same week, two senior officials were suspended for “financial irregularities”. At the launch of the new, 26 Million Rand boat, 1 year late, on 31 January of this year, it was found to leak and had to be removed from the water for repairs. Granted, this is not an unusual occurrence for new vessels, but it still doesn’t inspire me to hog tie myself before going aboard a boat run by an organisation that ran at a loss of R25 Million during the 2006/2007 financial year!
On a more human level, however, we should be asking ourselves, as South Africans, what this New Visitor Experience could possibly lend to our nation. Are we discovering our history, or taking part in some bizarre passion play in our cargo-cult holocaust? Does a first-person re-enactment of the plight of Nelson Mandela amplify his undeniable greatness as a person, or does it just amplify in me a festering resentment of his oppressors and (if I happened to be black) of white people? Is this helping to build a nation, or are we symbolically chaining ourselves to the inequities of the past when we chain ourselves to the Robben Island ferry?
I feel a great solidarity with the victims of apartheid. In a recent reply to a comment, I lamented the use of the K-word on my fellow South Africans, because of the immediate and unjustified emotional pain that it inflicts. If you, however, choose to inflict the painful memory of apartheid on yourself unnecessarily, sympathy becomes far more difficult to motivate. It is far easier to sell people tickets that enable them to arrive on Robben Island in shackles that it is to sell them tickets that enable them to walk out of the Victor Verster Prison and embark on a path of reconciliation so profound and sincere that it formed the foundation of our modern, reborn nation.